"Watch Out for Diesel 10!"

I know I'm biased, but Mareto is far too adorable for people not to notice. His head is covered in tight black curls that remind me of springs, and his cheeks are soft and squishy and always ready to smile. When we go out in public, strangers often try to talk to him.

We might be making our way down a grocery store aisle when it happens: A sweet older woman smiles and says, "Hello, young man!" Mareto looks up, pleased that someone is speaking to him, and blurts out, "Watch out for Diesel 10!"

I laugh as the stranger glances at me in confusion, and I awkwardly mention something about five-year-olds and Thomas the Tank Engine. She smiles, still confused, and walks away. Mareto has already retreated back into his own mind, but even so, he remains ready to warn the next person who might try to engage him in conversation.

This was Mareto's standard greeting for well over a year. We had different ways of explaining it to strangers, friends, and acquaintances. Sometimes we'd just keep walking. Other times we'd say how much he loves Thomas the Tank Engine movies, and occasionally we'd stop to explain that our son has autism and often struggles with the "right way" to engage with new people.

One day it hit me that in his own special way, Mareto was doing what most of us wish we could do. Many people — myself included — say that they're sick of shallow talk, and they would much rather get into things that matter when they talk to people. I think what they're really saying is that they want to talk about the things they care about, the things that make them ... them. Yet they continue having the same surface-level conversations we all have every day, probably because it can feel rather awkward to actually dive into topics we're passionate about.

It's scary to let people really see us right off the bat. We keep our barriers intact until we feel safe and have tested the waters to determine whether or not this is the crowd with whom we can be ourselves. Fear keeps us from forming relationships.

For me — and I imagine for most people — it's the fear of judgment that causes me to hold back and talk about things I don't really care about. It's just easier. After all, we're each unique, created with varying interests and gifts, so the things that make me excited might seem silly to others. But that doesn't mean we should hide those parts of ourselves.

For example, I love movies, and I always have. I love vintage Hollywood and current blockbusters. Give me Judy Garland and a bucket of popcorn, and I'll consider it a great day. Same goes for Sandra Bullock and a bag of Sour Patch Kids. Talking about movies, my favorite TV shows, and actors is fun for me because I'm interested in those things. But most of the time I wait to get to know people before I ever bring up the topic on my own.

Last summer I went out to dinner with a group of my girlfriends. These friends were fairly new to me because we'd moved to a new city and had only recently started attending their church. On the drive to the restaurant one of my new friends brought up an actress, and I lit up. Suddenly we were chatting about movies and actors with our heads close together. Our other friends laughed and mentioned how out of touch with that topic they were, but they also smiled as we talked because it was fun to see our enthusiasm.

Do you see my point? To every other person in that van, what my friend and I were discussing was shallow and meaningless. But to us it wasn't. We shared a similar interest, and we cared about our topic — silly as it was to other people. Soon we moved on from movies to donuts, and we began bonding over another shared love. Next thing we knew, we realized we had both grown up in California and had even more in common than we first realized.

Before, I had been afraid that perhaps my new friends would judge me as superficial or "worldly" if they knew how much I loved movies. A little voice in my head had whispered that it wouldn't look good for a pastor's wife to care about any of that. But that little voice was lying and talking to my insecurities.

My friend's simple comment about an actress she liked caused my guard to go down and opened the door for us to connect more quickly. I now consider her one of my dearest friends, and I love that I'm as comfortable chatting with her about movies as I am discussing more serious things, such as both our sons' developmental delays.

The path to connection with others can start with expressing joys we have in common, but it can also go the route of sharing heavier issues we feel deeply about. The funny thing is the way we sometimes avoid both types of conversation — which reflects the way we hide from each other.

Case in point: I may love movies, but I'm also passionate about bigger things, such as orphan care and prevention, global hunger and access to clean water, history and politics, race relations, education reform, and disability awareness and acceptance. But I tend not to lead off with those topics for fear of being viewed as "too intense." They are heavy, massive issues that I worry will make people uncomfortable, so I keep them to myself unless someone else leads the conversation in that direction.

One place where this changes completely, though, is the Created for Care Retreat. Every year, in February and March, I make the seven-hour drive from my home in Virginia to a lakeside resort in Georgia. Together with eleven of my dearest friends, we spend four days working as hard as we can putting on retreats designed to create an environment of rest, refreshment, education, and encouragement for nine hundred foster and adoptive mothers annually.

Women come to Georgia from all over the United States and Canada. Some missionary moms even fly in from the countries where they serve. Some are young mothers in waiting, and some are empty nesters who foster. Our educational, political, social, spiritual, and financial backgrounds are all over the map, but we all have one thing in common: our experience in foster care and adoption. Something truly special happens at these retreats. Invisible walls crumble to the ground, and strangers become sisters.

The first year I attended Created for Care, I came home and tried to explain it to my husband,...